Mr. Bumble was more right than he knew

"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, "the law is a ass, a
idiot."

Charles Dickens, "Oliver Twist"

WASHINGTON - Ever wonder about the accuracy of Charles Dickens'
observation through Mr. Bumble that sometimes "the law is a ass" and
what that costs Americans in both taxes and justice? Well, take a look
at some current examples and make up your own mind.

For months now, the federal prosecutors and courts have been
dithering with the case of the would-be 9/11 participant, Zacarias
Moussaoui, first to convict him in a showcase trial and then to
determine whether to give him the death penalty or life in prison
without parole, all at millions of dollars in cost to the taxpayers.
Clearly he revered the death penalty as a means of gaining the
importance that he never really had in the scheme that destroyed the
World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and brought about the crash of
another airliner in a Pennsylvania field.

In reality, Moussaoui was a small figure, if even that, in the
entire affair. He may or may not have known what he claims to have
known and the jury refused to grant him the privilege of martyrdom.
After lengthy deliberations, it came up with the right decision, life
in prison. Why give this nitwit what he wanted? Make him live every day
of his miserable life on bread and water in total isolation, a long way
from paradise.

Then there is the case of the snipers who terrorized the Washington
area four years ago - the deranged Svengali, John Allen Muhammad, and
his young disciple, Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad has been convicted and
sentenced to death and Malvo to life in prison without parole for
slayings in Virginia. But that hasn't stopped ambitious prosecutors in
neighboring Maryland from trying them all over again at a huge cost to
taxpayers, all on the pretext of bringing closure to the families of
victims in their state and discovering the real motives for the
killings of four years ago. What motives? The prosecutors aren't going
to ask for the death penalty for Muhammad, presumably because they
realize that executing him in Virginia and then hauling the body to
Maryland for a second shot would be just a bit too ghoulish.

Arson case in Texas

But Mr. Bumble's assessment of the law was always about justice
found or denied. A panel of experts in Texas has discovered that faulty
evidence in two separate arson cases sent two men to death row and one
of them was executed. The other received $430,000 in 2004 for 17 years
of false imprisonment. In a report for the Innocence Project that is
being turned over to the newly established Texas Forensic Science
Commission, the experts said that prosecutors used the same faulty
scientific theories to mistakenly convict and then ultimately exonerate
one man and then convict and execute the other.

Once again, the system failed because of bad investigators,
prosecutors and judges. How many other such cases exist in Texas alone
is anyone's guess, since Texas leads the nation in arson convictions as
it does in executions.

In Maryland, the state judicial commission filed misconduct charges
against a judge who it claimed has shown a pattern of abusiveness
toward women appearing before him.

This is worth mentioning because he is the very same jurist who, in
a ruling that has drawn national attention on the Oprah Winfrey Show,
dismissively rejected a woman's plea to keep in place a protective
order against her estranged husband who three weeks later doused her
with gasoline and set her on fire.

The commission officially charged that Prince George's County judge
Richard Palumbo engaged in a broad pattern of misconduct when
considering protective orders in domestic violence matters, including
inappropriate remarks to those seeking relief. According to local news
reports, this charmer, who stands a magnificent 5 feet 4 inches tall,
allegedly refused to listen to the burn victim-to-be when she appeared
before him. When she said she wanted a divorce, he replied, "And I
would like to be 6 foot-5." Wonderful. He would do well in an Islamic
country.

One could only wish that there were some test to determine the
fitness of those we elect or name to the bench or to the prosecution.
But built-in systemic incompetence, alas, is a cross democracy must
bear.